Skills Advice

How lightly can you sketch? Practice making soft lines on a piece of paper with a pencil. These lines can make a picture or can just be random lines on a piece of paper.

SKETCH LIGHTLY

Skills Advice #1 from Mr. Birmingham:

In art, sketching is a skill used for practicing, discovering, and experiencing what you can do with a pencil. This is an important skill to to work on regardless of how long you have been doing art for. Sketching is often done lightly. This allows for mistakes to take place and allows for the erasing of such mistakes if needed. However, you don't have to worry about erasing mistakes all of the time because sketching is a chance for an artist to practice and grow. From there, sketches can then be made darker so that there can be a transformation from a work in progress to a final piece of art. Some might ask how soft lines should be. For me, I like to make my lines soft enough so that they can be easily erased if I decide go beyond the experimentation and discovery phase and make this particular sketch a more finished piece of art.

When drawing upside down, the coloring part is not as important as the drawing part.

DRAW UPSIDE DOWN

Skills Advice #2 from Mr. Birmingham:

Throughout our years as an artist, we have learned many habits that keep us from improving. One of those habits involves what what we think we see. When we draw a face, we are influenced by what we think we see and draw accordingly. This habit keeps us from drawing what we actually see. Give this exercise a try and pay attention to what the lines and shapes are actually doing and not what your brain is trying to influence you on what they should be doing. As always, try to do this many different times with the same picture. Also, start with a more simple drawing that isn't flooded with detail.

This is an amazing book (for all ages) where one can see how a beautiful oops can become something unexpectedly amazing! Click on the picture above to be taken to a youtube video of the book being read out loud.

DON'T LET FAILURE KEEP YOU FROM TRYING

Skills Advice #3 from Mr. Birmingham:

Don't ever let failure keep you from trying. Failure is not when your piece of art does not turn out as you had expected. Those moments are successful learning experiences. Take those learning experiences and allow them to help you improve. I always like to think that we are never perfect. Beautiful oops moments will surround us in almost every aspect of our lives. Those oops allow us to become better at something. However, we have to allow ourselves the opportunity to experience these moments. Be brave and allow yourself to learn from what so many have been calling "mistakes".

TAKE CARE OF YOUR SUPPLIES

Skills Advice #4 from Mr. Birmingham:

ALWAYS take care of your supplies and never be afraid to take the extra time to prepare them for how you plan to use them. For example, a nicely sharpened pencil can be extremely useful when shading or creating line detail in a piece of art. However, a dull pencil can be used for soft sketching. Regardless of how you plan on using your supplies, be sure to take good care of your supplies and they will take good care of you and your unique creations!

As you can see, the flamingo drawing on the left is drawn with shapes. These are shapes (circles, ovals, triangles, squares, rectangles) that we all recognize. Use this knowledge to construct the basic shape of the flamingo as it will guide you in drawing the flamingo on the right.

Use Shapes

Skills Advice #5 from Mr. Birmingham:

I have always been a firm believer that anyone can be an artist as long as they can draw shapes. If you can draw lines then you can draw shapes. If you can draw shapes then you can draw pictures. All pictures can be broken down into simpler identifiable shapes. Positioning these shapes on a piece of paper will allow a picture to be created with those shapes. So, when looking to improve, try to look at an object or picture and see what kinds of shapes make that object or picture up. After a while, you will feel like you are becoming an artistic surgeon that dissects something into every shape that makes it up. Be sure to be patient with yourself. This skill does take time and practice!

One of the most rewarding parts of quick draws is that it allows us to see progress more rapidly. As you can see, the quick draw of the first bird is done as a simple line drawing with very little detail. Not much time is invested in the first bird, but there is quite a bit of information the artist gathers from the experience of drawing the first bird. They are able to see what works and what doesn't work without investing a great deal of time into a piece of art. Over time, your quick draws will allow you to develop an evolution of artistic products as seen above. REMEMBER, DON'T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF!!! Nobody is perfect and this type of practice takes away the pressure of being perfect.

Quick draws

Skills Advice #6 from Mr. Birmingham:

Many artists are afraid to start drawing because they are afraid they are going to make mistakes. The fact is that mistakes are hidden learning experiences. We learn from these moments a great deal. Having said that, it doesn't make it any easier for certain people to get over their fear of not being perfect. In each of my sketchbooks, I scribble on the front page. I do that because it is no longer a perfect sketchbook and I can feel free to improve without pressure. Try drawing quickly. Sure, there will be some "mistakes", but those are expected. Drawing quickly allows you to practice when you don't have much time and it allows you to worry less about being perfect and more about just having fun practicing.

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